Pursuing the fullness of God

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. (Philippians 3)

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

In my prayers...

This morning I met with a group of men from our church for a prayer breakfast. I shared a little devotional based on Paul's introductions to many of his letters. I noticed that before he gets into theology, preaching, teaching, rebuking, encouraging, etc. that he shares with his audience how he has been praying for them.

I realized that just because I rush into the "meat" of God's Word when I study the Bible, doesn't mean that Paul rushed into anything. The beautiful truths in Paul's letters that continue to shape our faith and organize the Church were birthed out of prayer. Paul started with prayer. He loved the people he was writing to, and he prayed for them. While he could've been minding his own business, he was praying.

I realized also that I have a tendency to assume prayer. I assume that people know that I'm praying for them. I assume that others are praying for me. I assume that people are praying about the problems that they're talking to me about. I think this is dangerous. I've tried to make a focused effort to participate more in prayer. Not that I didn't pray before, but when someone's in my office and talking about something, that's the time to pray. Paul prayed before he wrote. If we want to be people with significant things to say, we must be people who start with prayer.

River Stone family, we will have another Men's Prayer Breakfast on June 5th -7am at Rogelio's in San Marcos. We'd love for you to join us. Let me know if I can be praying for you...